Diary – 21 October 2005

At home I work in a cupboard under the stairs just to keep me grounded, so you won’t hear me talking about my ‘studio’ — unlike some cartoonists I could name. My cupboard has in it, apart from old clothes, a cat litter tray and a collection of hundreds of jazz CDs. Do I put them back in their cases when I’ve finished playing them? I do not; anyway, I now have an iPod with all my music downloaded on to it. Fancy that! All those wonderful CDs on a machine the size of a packet of five Woodbines. Now I can have music wherever I go, so don’t even try and speak to me. I can’t hear you. In fact I have caught up with the rest of you with plugs in your ears, but I still haven’t got a mobile phone and so I’m not texting this diary from anywhere exotic. I’m writing it in my cupboard under the stairs. A hangover from the war, I’m afraid. At least then if you had a large black Bakelite telephone you could pick up and dial Whitehall 1212 and the police would be round in a tick and apprehend the yob attacking you. His name was Hitler, by the way.

I read the other day of a woman who said she suffered from hairdresserphobia. Is there anyone out there with a similar complaint? Well, I’m certainly phobic about having my hair cut, and have been ever since my mother had me tied to a hairdresser’s chair when I was five and left me there and went God knows where. I’d rather go out on stage at a Royal Command Performance than have to make conversation with a crimper. ‘Been away have you, sir?’ ‘Well, yes, I have. It’s a little island near Naples.